Now Is the Hour (52 page)

Friends, Billie said. Always. I promise.

On Pole Line Road, the buzz of a siren and a cop car flashing red and white.

Friends, I said, I promise.

Everything the same, everything differnt.

Billie slammed the pickup door hard, then poked her face into the window.

What you doing Saturday night? Billie said.

No plans, I said.

Would you like to go to the Senior Summer All Night Party with me? Billie said.

Red and white flashes on the world, headlights, dark.

What about Chuck? I said.

Billie's big smile all over her face.

Just because I screwed him, Billie said, don't mean I go out with him.

From deep down in my belly up, a weird sound out of my mouth. Billie Cody could make me laugh.

Yah, I said, but won't he be pissed?

He could give a shit, Billie said. Besides he's got a date with your brother-in-law and Joe Scardino.

At that moment, a dust devil whirled up dust, napkins, paper sacks, from the gravel of the parking lot.

The cop car flashed red, flashed white, red, white, red, white, red, white.

I'd love to go, I said.

As fate would have it, just before noon on Friday, George pitched the last bale of hay off the truck. I picked the hay bale up and shoved it in place into the stack. Neither George nor I jumped around and yelled fuck and did cartwheels like when we'd finished baling. I guess because we were both tired. At least, that's what I thought.

The sky was gray overcast, gray and bright, and the wind was blowing hot from the southeast, not the northwest, where the wind usually blows from.

Feels like rain, George said.

That's what people do in Idaho, they talk about the weather instead of talking about what they want to talk about.

With our feet, George and I scraped the hay dust and hay leaves off
the truck bed and into the feed manger. At the head board of the truck bed, I dug out the smashed-in hay leaves that had piled up in the corners. Inside the cab, George picked up the candy wrappers and the empty cigarette packs and Coke bottles.

Let's face it, we were both trying to find things to do.

The end of something and before the beginning of something else.

The cleaning up was done and the haying was over, and we weren't going to work another day in the hay, and our time together was over, and we weren't going to see each other again except for maybe pass each other driving on Tyhee Road or Philbin Road or Quinn Road.

So there we were, George and I, standing behind the truck. Two men face to face, not looking the other in the eyes. Both of us trying to find what to do with our arms and our hands. We knew this was it, but neither one of us said a thing.

George took his hat off, smacked his hat alongside his thigh, then jumped up on the back of the truck. He sat on the truck bed, his legs dangling down. George looked up at the sky, let out a big sigh, said:

Cigarette?

George stuck out his hand. George's strong hand in front of my face for me to grab hold of. I almost didn't take it, I almost ignored his hand and hiked myself up alone. Then before I knew it, George'd reached down, put his hand around my forearm, and I put my hand around his forearm, and George pulled.

Going up, I thought I was going to hit the sky.

Little laughs from inside the both of us. Our arms had touched, and our bodies had to laugh. George's touch was still all over my arm when I sat down. I sat an arm's length away.

My hand went to my T-shirt pocket and patted.

I don't have any today, I said.

We can smoke mine, George said.

George pulled a Camel out of the pack, just one Camel, lit it. Two perfect French inhales.

George handed the cigarette to me. Our fingers did not touch.

The wet on the filter, that was George's lips.

So, I said, you got enough money to buy Granny her refrigerator?

Went to Sears Sunday, George said. Bought her a nice one.

I handed the cigarette back to George. Our fingers did not touch.

We sat there, our legs hanging down. The cows were starting to crowd up to the manger.

I was going to say something about how dumb cows were or something like that, something about the weather, some Idaho shit.

Then George said: Me and you, George said, we've had our ups and downs, George said. I want you to know I wish you well.

Quick lightning in my veins, in my chest a big gust of wind.

I loved God so much right then.

When I went to speak, I couldn't. No words inside me. Then all at once, something hit, and my lips started moving. I didn't know what I was going to say.

I never have seen Flaco and Acho again, I said. Not ever.

I toked on the cigarette, didn't even try a French inhale, handed the cigarette back to George.

The gold bars in George's dark eyes. Jesus in George's eyes.

Then George looked up and away, the same way Billie'd looked up and out the window. When things are difficult to say.

It's probably best that way, George said.

Breath. All that was empty was everything.

Two guys sitting on the back of a truck. The truck parked between a haystack and a feed manger. All around them dark gray sky. A bunch of damn drut Hereford cows staring up.

I didn't know what to do. I figured it was best to get it over with, so I took a deep breath, put a smile on my face, stuck my hand out.

Well, goodbye then, I said.

Then: I hope what you're waiting for comes to you.

When George's palm touched my palm, I was ready to give his hand a big so-long-pardner pump, but his hand just rested there in mine, letting me hold it. Big, rough, calloused hands. My palm so white, the back suntanned brown, thin and long.

George's voice was soft, like that first day in the yard when he spoke.

It'll come, George said. Whatever it is.

When I went to pull my hand away, George's hand stayed tight around my hand. George pulled, and just like that we were chest to chest, and my face was in his neck. The part of the tomato that folds together red into the stem of green.

Our cowboy hats poked into each other. Knocked my hat clean off my head.

Buckskin and flint on the back of my throat.

George's lips moved slow against my ear: Shoshones don't have a
word for goodbye, George said. We just say
Happy trails
or
Keep on tumbling like a tumbleweed.

Then that quick, George pulled me away from him the way he'd pulled me in and then let go.

George jumped down off the truck.

He handed me up my hat. Our fingers did not touch.

Tell your old man I'll be by tonight to pick up the rest of my check, George said.

I'll walk home from here, George said.

One last toke on the cigarette, a wicked French inhale, then George's fingers crushed out the butt onto the bed of the truck.

George was halfway down the mangers, almost to the end of the feedlots.

George! I yelled.

George stopped right in his tracks. Turned around quick.

From that far away I could see his dark eyes.

Yah? George said.

Ididn'tsay
don't go away.
I didn't say
come back,
I didn't say
please stay.

As usual, I didn't have a clue
what
I was going to say.

Then: Can I bum another cigarette? I said.

George started a slow lope back along the mangers. The sky behind him was gray to pure white to charcoal in the east. The cows all moved away because of George. At about ten feet from the truck, George stopped, took the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, tossed the pack an arch into the air. The Camels landed exactly in my hands.

Keep the pack, he said. I've got more at home.

Then George turned around.

George had his own way of walking. Long legs slung out slow, hip and shoulder syncopation, riding low in his own saddle.

At the end of the haystack, just as he turned.

Happy trails! I yelled.

Keep on tumbling like a tumbleweed! I yelled.

That quick, George was gone.

I was on the back of the truck, my arms wrapped around my middle. The place on my arm where George had grabbed me.

Just me and the cows.

And Tramp, his pink tongue hanging out, a wet piece of bologna.

Tramp, I said, looks like it's just you and me.

Tramp got that look on his face. His paw started poking, poking the air.

I leaned over, picked up George's crushed-out cigarette. Put the butt to my lips.

After supper, I changed the water in the pasture. When I got in the pickup to go back home, the gray clouds in the west were showing off orange and pink. By the time I drove into the yard, it was night.

The lights on inside the house, the television, the rosary, my bed, my hot sheets — I couldn't face it. I started walking.

At the swimming hole, the white water flowed down the outcropping of lava rock. The air was hot. The moon on the silver water, the coolness of the water, the music. But I didn't take off my clothes. I went to the bolted-down two-by-twelve, jumped across to the slick, dark lava rock, and landed, my black Converse tennis shoes suction cups. My hands and feet found their way up the side of the mossy, wet, dark lava. On top, the flat, dusty earth was hot even through my shoes.

I leaned against the barbwire fence, the fence between yellow Bannock County and the red rez. Granny's Lombardy poplars were darker than the night.
The wind in the tops of the trees, a roll and swirl. In Granny's kitchen window, the kerosene lamp. A tiny bright square of light in all the dark. Granny's ancestors were out here in a special tree looking in on that light just like me. So bright the little flame in the lamp.

A gust of wind started me thinking about Thunderbird and God and spirits and what happens to us when we die. I wondered if you had to be Indian to hang out in a tree when you're dead.

That would be about the best.

Being a tree, or sitting in a tree, was a fine idea of heaven.

I squinted hard to see if the kerosene lamp was burning the curtain. I stayed silent, listened hard like a coyote or a wolf. Frogs and crickets, the wind, a faraway train. No fire.

No George.

George was probably out. Mom'd paid him his last paycheck, and for sure George was out on the town in his yellow dress and red high heels having himself a ball.

That's when it hit me. I turned around slow.

The wind in the cedar tree, a sweet sound, and sad too.

The scrub cedar by the swimming hole, all these years, the tree where Granny's Shoshone ancestors lived.

Granny's sacred tree.

I sat down right there on the dusty earth, and maybe for the first time ever, I took a good, long look at the tree.

The sweaty body smell of it. The trunk came up out of the ground maybe a foot thick. The boughs didn't begin until about where my head was as I sat. Ten or twelve feet tall, not as wide. Full and green and dense. Compact like the way you draw trees as a kid, except for one branch up at the top that took off all by itself.

At eye level, an arm's length away, was the lowest of the cedar boughs.

I wondered then in all the years if I'd ever touched the tree.

I reached my hand out to touch the bottom limb. My fingers were right there, ready to grasp. Then I thought about what George had said. There were some things for the white man not to know.

Sacred things.

That night in my dream, Granny's ancestor tree was a yellow submarine filled with Indian people laughing and dancing and singing.

WHEN BLACK AND
white turns to color. I've searched my whole life for that moment. When a big gust of Idaho wind turns to Thunderbird and all that is ordinary falls away. In an instant you're in the gaze of another, and for whatever reason — the universe, fate, or just dumb luck — all of a sudden things get perfectly clear, it's magic, one soul is touching another, and there is love.

That first bright morning with Flaco and Acho, when I shook Flaco's hand, and he didn't shake my hand, but held my hand in his. I shaded my eyes and took the chance, looked quick, and in his eyes was Jesus.

Then Billie, how hard we laughed, waiting for Godot, the goddamn cigarette lighter, my body a forty-pound block of extra-sharp Cheddar cheese.
Like you? I think I love you.
The way our kisses could make a dream.

And George. Mom and me in the Buick and the Buick spinning out of control and out there in the sunset field a naked man holding his hands open to a drop of rain.

So many moments I've stood close to the fire.

But I always stepped back. Dared not step beyond the safety of the fulcrum point. George says you have to wait, to trust, for the moment spirit touches you.

What I've just figured out is that if you're not there, ready for spirit, ready to take the plunge, to jump, to fly, you're shit out of luck.

You have to step up too, and not just up to, you have to take the step that's just beyond.

Maybe spirit will greet you, maybe not.

In any case, you have to take the step alone.

And despite all odds, do something completely on your own.

Little did I know the Senior Summer All Night Party was going to provide me the opportunity to take my first step.

I didn't have a clue what was ahead of me. That Saturday evening, the only problem I could see was how to get out of the house.

I figured the best thing to do was lie and just say I was going to some kind of prom. But in the middle of summer? Everybody knew about the Senior Summer All Night Party. Even Mom. Two years ago, she wouldn't let Sis go.

Like always, though, things were worse than they seemed.

There was a lot more to worry about than the
all night
part of the Senior Summer All Night Party.

The universe has always conspired to fuck me up.